THE SEASON OF FIRE Poem by Michael Daniel Higgins

It was from those barren
moments
that the cloth is woven
of a black suit
of death.

The weaving is not the
work
of a single night or day
but of that thin season
where no fire
lights the darkness.

It is not a season of prayer,
a dry time
when the sap
is not in ebb
but has left.

The death of the loved one
is rehearsed
a thousand times
by lovers
who prepare their black
of the heart
in awful anticipation.

That black is sewn
from a thousand times
of rejection
when the turn of the body
of the loved one
is not read
as the sign of light
in darkness.

The season of prayer
is the time of life
and love,
of look and touch.

And, when the time comes,
it is those moments
that inform the great pain
of a hole in the heart.

The magic of the healing
does not come from
rehearsal
of the weaving of the black
but from an intimacy
of look and touch
in the season of fire.